Developers, city hoping to inject new life into downtown Jacksonville

Building under construction by Martin Aragona at intersection of Court and Old Bridge streets in downtown Jacksonville recently.

John Althouse/The Daily News

By Christopher Thomas Christopher.Thomas@JDNews.com

Published: Sunday, May 4, 2014 at 09:11 AM.

Downtown Jacksonville is undergoing changes.

Once unoccupied or abandoned buildings have been bought and refurbished by local land developers in hopes of recapturing of the downtown area’s former appeal. One of those developers is co-owner of Marlo Construction, Inc., and Onslow County native Martin Aragona. Aragona said he remembers hearing about the way things were in downtown during the 1940s and 1950s when it was the place to do business of any kind in the county. Department stores and restaurants lined the streets.

Aragona said it was a very different story while he was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s.

“I couldn’t believe how many people walked up and down the street on Friday and Saturday night,” Aragona said.

Aragona said downtown Jacksonville, with its close proximity to the New River, has always had the potential to have a beautiful, thriving downtown district, though it hasn’t always lived up to that potential as abandoned stores and run down homes became a common sight.

Jacksonville City Manager and former land developer Richard Woodruff, who arrived in Jacksonville four years ago, thought the same thing.

“When I first saw downtown Jacksonville, I thought of missed opportunities,” Woodruff said. “We have a beautiful river (the New River) like downtown Beaufort and Wilmington, but when you have a great community asset and it’s consumed primarily with vacant buildings, it’s a waste.”

In 2012, the City of Jacksonville and the Onslow County governments began meeting to discuss ways to develop the area, though residential rejuvenation had already begun. Colorful homes on West Railroad Street were built facing the Riverwalk Park by local real estate developer Hunter Hadley, but those properties are a block away from run down and vacant store fronts.

“When I came here and saw downtown, I didn’t like what I saw,” Hadley said. “We’re working to get things back to what they were. We’ve got to have people living downtown to support the business, and most business aren’t going to come to a place if there’s no one there to support them.”

Woodruff said downtown Jacksonville may never be the “retail center” of the city like it once was and that the county’s legal and judicial entities are the “anchor” of the area. He said those economic opportunities must be explored in order revitalize the downtown district.

According to Woodruff, the city has spent approximately $3 million on downtown revitalization alone, not including the approximately $23 million the city has invested in the Public Safety Building set to open this summer and the approximately $6 million the city paid for its renovations to Jacksonville City Hall.

“We have to protect our tax base,” Woodruff said. “It’s true that anyone and everyone is building on Western Boulevard, but on the other hand, if you turn your back on a part of the community and let it continue declining, the tax base will also decline in that area. We could have moved City Hall to Western Boulevard and turned our backs completely on downtown. But we have a commitment to that area, and we’re already seeing improvement. This is not the same downtown we saw five or six years ago.”

Michele Parsley, the owner of her self-named photography business on New Bridge Street, says she isn’t sure about the city’s commitment to the downtown area.

Parsley said her business has been in downtown Jacksonville for more than two years and from the day that location opened in January 2012, she’s been having a difficult time with everything from trash pick up to the sidewalk in front of her building, which she claims was repaired only because she threatened to start handing out attorneys’ business cards to the people who kept tripping over the cracks.

“The city cares about Western Boulevard and the big shopping centers, but they have no love for the local businesses,” Parsley said. “We don’t bring in the kind of money the big businesses bring in.”

Parsley said one of the primary issues she’s had with the downtown area focuses on a lack of parking spaces, which she says makes selling her business to passersby a difficult task, a complaint shared by Renee Worthington, owner of Courthouse Caffe on Court Street.

“There’s a huge parking lot diagonal to us, and a lot of our customers have to walk a long way after they park to get to us,” Worthington said. “The ideal parking is always taken up by people that work for the Sheriff’s Office or the Tax Office or the Clerk of Court. I have tried relentlessly to talk to the mayor and the chief of police, but we’re still having problems with parking.”

Worthington said that though the city has done a “great job” by encouraging owners of vacant and abandoned buildings to sell their property, the downtown area still isn’t the kind of destination it needs to be for retail businesses to flourish, citing parking as well as narrow sidewalks, which she says makes outdoor dining on warm days an impossible prospect.

“We had a beautiful weather the other night...How nice would it be to have tables outside?” Worthington asked. “I’ve sat it on City Council meetings where they said talked about making (Court Street) two way and extend the sidewalks. There’s just no room for it now.”

Woodruff said he agreed that parking is a problem in downtown Jacksonville but said the city is working on improving it with the implementation of 40 public parking spaces on Court Street near the new Public Safety Building. Woodruff said, though, that making downtown more consumer friendly will require cooperation from city and county employees to park further away from their respective offices and leave room for visitors, a prospect Woodruff said he’s seen work at the post office on New Bridge Street.

“Employees of the post office used to park on the street and take up 20 to 30 parking spaces,” Woodruff said. “We met with the Postal Union and worked with the county to have a surface parking on Johnson Boulevard and now the employees park there, leaving the street parking open to the public.”

Aragona said his company is working on two projects on Court Street near Onslow County Superior Court. One of those projects, which is at 622 Court St., is nearly finished and may have its grand opening before the beginning of summer, according to Aragona. It would be the end of one stage of a project that lasted more than five years, and the beginning of a new business: Biagio’s Italian Coffee & Espresso Bar. The building faces both Old Bridge Street and Court Street and Aragona says it will have room for four separate restaurants under the same roof.

According to Aragona the restaurants that will occupy that building on Court Street will be independent and unique to the city. Aragona said along with the cafe, he’s looking to add a bakery and a restaurant that sells food items like pizza and hamburgers.

“Everyone enjoys going to the restaurants on Western, but we wanted to offer something different,” Aragona said. “We want to offer something for the people who work downtown and also for the people that wouldn’t usually visit downtown. We don’t want to compete with Western. We just want to offer something different.”

Aragona said his company is working on another project one block away from the multi-restaurant complex. He hopes to turn the site at 516 Court St. into a mix of office buildings and a retail establishment, though there is no timetable on that project’s completion due to changes in the building’s plans. Aragona said Marlo Construction has invested nearly $2 million in downtown revitalization projects.

“It’s been expensive and a big undertaking,” Aragona said. “We didn’t want to do halfhearted renovations. We wanted to do it full speed ahead and do it the right way. We’ve had ‘Band-Aid’ renovations over the years when these old, beautiful buildings needed something more. We don’t expect to make our money back on day one, but we do hope to make it back gradually over the next five years.”

Parsley, the photographer, said she wishes Aragona and his new business well, but doesn’t believe it will be enough to bring about meaningful revitalization in Downtown Jacksonville.

“Downtown needs more than a coffee shop,” Parsley said.

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Once unoccupied or abandoned buildings have been bought and refurbished by local land developers in hopes of recapturing of the downtown area’s former appeal. One of those developers is co-owner of Marlo Construction, Inc., and Onslow County native Martin Aragona. Aragona said he remembers hearing about the way things were in downtown during the 1940s and 1950s when it was the place to do business of any kind in the county. Department stores and restaurants lined the streets.

Aragona said it was a very different story while he was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s.

“I couldn’t believe how many people walked up and down the street on Friday and Saturday night,” Aragona said.

Aragona said downtown Jacksonville, with its close proximity to the New River, has always had the potential to have a beautiful, thriving downtown district, though it hasn’t always lived up to that potential as abandoned stores and run down homes became a common sight.

Jacksonville City Manager and former land developer Richard Woodruff, who arrived in Jacksonville four years ago, thought the same thing.

“When I first saw downtown Jacksonville, I thought of missed opportunities,” Woodruff said. “We have a beautiful river (the New River) like downtown Beaufort and Wilmington, but when you have a great community asset and it’s consumed primarily with vacant buildings, it’s a waste.”

In 2012, the City of Jacksonville and the Onslow County governments began meeting to discuss ways to develop the area, though residential rejuvenation had already begun. Colorful homes on West Railroad Street were built facing the Riverwalk Park by local real estate developer Hunter Hadley, but those properties are a block away from run down and vacant store fronts.

“When I came here and saw downtown, I didn’t like what I saw,” Hadley said. “We’re working to get things back to what they were. We’ve got to have people living downtown to support the business, and most business aren’t going to come to a place if there’s no one there to support them.”

Woodruff said downtown Jacksonville may never be the “retail center” of the city like it once was and that the county’s legal and judicial entities are the “anchor” of the area. He said those economic opportunities must be explored in order revitalize the downtown district.

According to Woodruff, the city has spent approximately $3 million on downtown revitalization alone, not including the approximately $23 million the city has invested in the Public Safety Building set to open this summer and the approximately $6 million the city paid for its renovations to Jacksonville City Hall.

“We have to protect our tax base,” Woodruff said. “It’s true that anyone and everyone is building on Western Boulevard, but on the other hand, if you turn your back on a part of the community and let it continue declining, the tax base will also decline in that area. We could have moved City Hall to Western Boulevard and turned our backs completely on downtown. But we have a commitment to that area, and we’re already seeing improvement. This is not the same downtown we saw five or six years ago.”

Michele Parsley, the owner of her self-named photography business on New Bridge Street, says she isn’t sure about the city’s commitment to the downtown area.

Parsley said her business has been in downtown Jacksonville for more than two years and from the day that location opened in January 2012, she’s been having a difficult time with everything from trash pick up to the sidewalk in front of her building, which she claims was repaired only because she threatened to start handing out attorneys’ business cards to the people who kept tripping over the cracks.

“The city cares about Western Boulevard and the big shopping centers, but they have no love for the local businesses,” Parsley said. “We don’t bring in the kind of money the big businesses bring in.”

Parsley said one of the primary issues she’s had with the downtown area focuses on a lack of parking spaces, which she says makes selling her business to passersby a difficult task, a complaint shared by Renee Worthington, owner of Courthouse Caffe on Court Street.

“There’s a huge parking lot diagonal to us, and a lot of our customers have to walk a long way after they park to get to us,” Worthington said. “The ideal parking is always taken up by people that work for the Sheriff’s Office or the Tax Office or the Clerk of Court. I have tried relentlessly to talk to the mayor and the chief of police, but we’re still having problems with parking.”

Worthington said that though the city has done a “great job” by encouraging owners of vacant and abandoned buildings to sell their property, the downtown area still isn’t the kind of destination it needs to be for retail businesses to flourish, citing parking as well as narrow sidewalks, which she says makes outdoor dining on warm days an impossible prospect.

“We had a beautiful weather the other night...How nice would it be to have tables outside?” Worthington asked. “I’ve sat it on City Council meetings where they said talked about making (Court Street) two way and extend the sidewalks. There’s just no room for it now.”

Woodruff said he agreed that parking is a problem in downtown Jacksonville but said the city is working on improving it with the implementation of 40 public parking spaces on Court Street near the new Public Safety Building. Woodruff said, though, that making downtown more consumer friendly will require cooperation from city and county employees to park further away from their respective offices and leave room for visitors, a prospect Woodruff said he’s seen work at the post office on New Bridge Street.

“Employees of the post office used to park on the street and take up 20 to 30 parking spaces,” Woodruff said. “We met with the Postal Union and worked with the county to have a surface parking on Johnson Boulevard and now the employees park there, leaving the street parking open to the public.”

Aragona said his company is working on two projects on Court Street near Onslow County Superior Court. One of those projects, which is at 622 Court St., is nearly finished and may have its grand opening before the beginning of summer, according to Aragona. It would be the end of one stage of a project that lasted more than five years, and the beginning of a new business: Biagio’s Italian Coffee & Espresso Bar. The building faces both Old Bridge Street and Court Street and Aragona says it will have room for four separate restaurants under the same roof.

According to Aragona the restaurants that will occupy that building on Court Street will be independent and unique to the city. Aragona said along with the cafe, he’s looking to add a bakery and a restaurant that sells food items like pizza and hamburgers.

“Everyone enjoys going to the restaurants on Western, but we wanted to offer something different,” Aragona said. “We want to offer something for the people who work downtown and also for the people that wouldn’t usually visit downtown. We don’t want to compete with Western. We just want to offer something different.”

Aragona said his company is working on another project one block away from the multi-restaurant complex. He hopes to turn the site at 516 Court St. into a mix of office buildings and a retail establishment, though there is no timetable on that project’s completion due to changes in the building’s plans. Aragona said Marlo Construction has invested nearly $2 million in downtown revitalization projects.

“It’s been expensive and a big undertaking,” Aragona said. “We didn’t want to do halfhearted renovations. We wanted to do it full speed ahead and do it the right way. We’ve had ‘Band-Aid’ renovations over the years when these old, beautiful buildings needed something more. We don’t expect to make our money back on day one, but we do hope to make it back gradually over the next five years.”

Parsley, the photographer, said she wishes Aragona and his new business well, but doesn’t believe it will be enough to bring about meaningful revitalization in Downtown Jacksonville.